A post on EVs' role in mitigating global warming.

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Assaf

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 21, 2013
Messages
60
Hi all,

I just completed a 3-part series on insideevs.com, about global warming and how EVs fit in. The "how EVs fit in" was mostly in part 3, here's the link:
http://insideevs.com/elephant-ev-room-part-iii-battle-mitigate-global-warming-whats-evs-role/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Teaser: there's an archive photo of a Commodore PET, but you'll have to read most of the post to figure out why it's there :)

Feel free to share.

Thanks!

Assaf
 
Thanks. I'd place the existing BEV products a little further along the timeline. I'd equate LEAF with the Commodore64, and the Tesla with the original Macintosh. :)
 
@Nubo I think we as Leaf drivers tend to have a more charitable view of our little toys, compared with the outside world. OTOH I've never really used a Commodore, only early IBM PC clones and a bit of Apple 2 and Alto :)

@LTLFT Not sure, maybe ground transport is about 10% of global CO2 right now. It's still a big single chunk, and besides the big fight is to Keep It in the Ground.
We now have a roadmap for keeping coal in the ground. EVs provide the start of a roadmap to keep oil in the ground. Last we'll deal with natural gas, which (except for fracking) is the relatively more benign of the 3.
 
I began struggling with the rhetoric at
"As home energy efficiency improves...our EVs will take a larger and larger chunk of electric demand, which ... is physically hard to sustain."
errr... no. If home energy efficiency improves, it becomes easier to sustain electricity demand. That EV %age usage increase is a purely arithmetic outcome and does not relate to a notional 'increase' of anything.

No real discussion on the major contribution that is the only real way forward and is much maligned - nuclear power.
 
donald said:
I began struggling with the rhetoric at
"As home energy efficiency improves...our EVs will take a larger and larger chunk of electric demand, which ... is physically hard to sustain."
errr... no. If home energy efficiency improves, it becomes easier to sustain electricity demand. That EV %age usage increase is a purely arithmetic outcome and does not relate to a notional 'increase' of anything.

No real discussion on the major contribution that is the only real way forward and is much maligned - nuclear power.

I agree; we have a fully-functional fusion reactor nearby that is more than capable of doing the job. :)
 
I know it's been perpetually 10-20 years away from becoming a reality, but I do think we'll see "domestic" fusion and small-scale reactors here on terra firma in that time-frame, and surely by mid-century. The need, benefits, and demand for it/them will become very great and obvious as the years go by. I think I even heard Musk once say that he had an interest in fusion, and should he ever have time to turn his attention and resources in that direction, it will become a done deal. ;-)
 
Assaf said:
@Nubo I think we as Leaf drivers tend to have a more charitable view of our little toys, compared with the outside world. OTOH I've never really used a Commodore, only early IBM PC clones and a bit of Apple 2 and Alto :)
Taught myself Basic on a Pet that I rented time on, back around the late '70s. Had a full screen editor and Commodore Basic allowed string arrays. Apple Basic sucked for editing, and Atari Basic had the best sound and graphics (natch) but lacked string arrays. Saving and retrieving programs and data on the Pet's cassette tape was an exercise in patience, though. ;) The Chiclet keyboard was alright, AFAIR. The first computer I owned was a Commodore 128, as I wanted an 80 character display, although ISTR the ability to play "F-15 Strike Eagle" and "Silent Service" on it played a big part in my decision :lol:
 
I'm just talking fission.
Known, reliable, politically-questionable but engineeringly solid, fission.
There could also be a new generation of fast breeder reactors that will stretch out the uranium stock 100 fold, but that gets even more politically fraught and only 'trial' reactors run so far. But it is a solution.
Energy breeding/thorium reactors could also be closer than most think. It's pretty well established physics, unlikely to be any major unknown 'gotchas'.
 
The REAL elephant in the room is that there has been NO global warming in the 21st century:

NOAANo_Global_Warming_In21st_Century.png

NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate at a Glance

You can try to spin that fact any way you want, but the simple fact is, global warming happened in the 20th century, but so far it has not shown up for the 21st century. If you think that CO2 was responsible for a majority of the warming at the end of the 20th century, the lack of warming in the 21st century tells you that you cannot be correct. Other factors must be dominant, otherwise they could not put a halt to the temperature effects of a much greater quantity of CO2 that resides in the atmosphere today.

As the Sun comes down from the peak of solar cycle 24, it will become clear to all just how minor a role CO2 plays in the temperature of our planet.

Your article would be much better if it provided actual data of what is going on on this planet today rather than scary projections from someone who has a long track record of projections that are far more ominous than reality.
 
I find it extremely odd that "21s Century" was linked to the Wikipedia article on the 21s century every single time it was mentioned in that post - three times, in fact. Not only is it completely unnecessary to link to that Wikipedia page (since it adds nothing to the content of the post), but to link to it three times is hilariously redundant.

No human acting on their own cognition would do that. Either RegGuheert is possessed by a bot, or he's just copy-pasting from somewhere, or he's gone full derp. In any case, that post was not written by a rational human being.

Edit: Played around with the NOAA page there. The ONLY way to get that graph is to select "December" as the month for the 12-month time span. If you select any other starting month you will get either zero (Sept./Nov.) or positive trendlines. So whatever deluded soul cherry picked that graph spent a lot of time digging through all the permutations of the available options to find the ONE graph that could be construed to support their opinion, and ran with it.
=Smidge=
 
Smidge204 said:
Edit: Played around with the NOAA page there. The ONLY way to get that graph is to select "December" as the month for the 12-month time span. If you select any other starting month you will get either zero (Sept./Nov.) or positive trendlines. So whatever deluded soul cherry picked that graph spent a lot of time digging through all the permutations of the available options to find the ONE graph that could be construed to support their opinion, and ran with it.
Click "Annual" for timescale.
 
Assaf,

I am going to apologize for Reg, our resident climate change denier. We have been trying to get him to look at the (non-cherry picked) science with an open mind, but without any success. Rest assured that most of us appreciate your article.

Still warming after all these years.
 
Nubo said:
"As home energy efficiency improves...our EVs will take a larger and larger chunk of electric demand
we have a fully-functional fusion reactor nearby that is more than capable of doing the job. :)
Judging by the responses, it appears no one realized that the "fully-functional fusion reactor" to which Nubo was referring is none other than our Sun (i.e., solar power). :D
 
I'd like to see some analysis of what % of carbon emissions are attributed to cars, and how much of that could by eliminated by PHEVs. Looks to me like dollar for dollar and pound for pound of batteries that's the best way to reduce carbon emissions from that sector to the noise level in an solution that is readily acceptable to consumers.
 
RegGuheert said:
If you think that CO2 was responsible for a majority of the warming at the end of the 20th century, the lack of warming in the tells you that you cannot be correct. Other factors must be dominant, otherwise they could not put a halt to the temperature effects of a much greater quantity of CO2 that resides in the atmosphere today.

Time scales are very important, and on short time periods other factors are dominant in the atmosphere.


RegGuheert said:
As the Sun comes down from the peak of solar cycle 24, it will become clear to all just how minor a role CO2 plays in the temperature of our planet.

Or not.
 
Cars and light-duty trucks represent a very small fraction of the total CO2 emissions, at least in the U.S..

http://climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/why-clean-cars/global-warming/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


61% of 28%, or 17% of the total.

Converting some cars to electric would reduce the total CO2 production by a very, very tiny bit. However, to a large extent, it would just shift the CO2 generation from transportation over to the electricity generation total.

Bottom line is that any mass adoption of electric vehicles is not going to make much difference at all in total CO2 production without a major shift in electric generation to cleaner methods.
 
Weatherman said:
Bottom line is that any mass adoption of electric vehicles is not going to make much difference at all in total CO2 production without a major shift in electric generation to cleaner methods.
What about the argument that just refining oil into gasoline uses about as much electricity as it does to power the EV directly?
 
Weatherman said:
Cars and light-duty trucks represent a very small fraction of the total CO2 emissions, at least in the U.S..

http://climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/why-clean-cars/global-warming/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From your link:

"The largest sources of transportation GHGs in 2006 were passenger cars (34%) and light duty trucks, which include sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans (28%). Together with motorcycles, these light-duty vehicles made up about 63% of transportation GHG emissions. "
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Weatherman said:
Bottom line is that any mass adoption of electric vehicles is not going to make much difference at all in total CO2 production without a major shift in electric generation to cleaner methods.
What about the argument that just refining oil into gasoline uses about as much electricity as it does to power the EV directly?

I suppose you could take a tiny bit out of the 20% contribution from Industry. But remember that gasoline is only one product resulting from the refining of crude oil. Refining crude isn't going to significantly slow down just because of a reduction in demand for one of the fractions.

I think the main appeal for the conversion to electric cars is to reduce dependency on foreign oil. We may not decrease the total amount of CO2 produced, but it will come from burning domestic natural gas and coal. Far more people (across the entire political and ideological spectrum) will be willing to go along with this argument than the argument that electric vehicle adoption will significantly reduce CO2 production.
 
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